Technology driven Deflation

Venture funding for AI is surging as evidenced by the chart below and the trend is showing no signs of letting up; in fact, the trend is so powerful that one can almost start with certainty that technology-driven deflation is going to be a very powerful force to reckon with. Imagine, small companies having the power to do what Amazon does but on a different scale. For example, flippy the burger bot replaces several workers saving a business up to 100K a year

“We are excited about the impact Miso’s AI-based solutions will have for the restaurant industry. Humans will always play a very critical role in the hospitality side of the business… We just don’t know what the new roles will be yet in the industry.”

The Bot will never get tired, never need uniforms and it’s not going to get sick or complain. Bottom line it is the perfect worker for small business burger joints that are looking to contain their costs and improve their services. As for the big players are concerned, it has the potential to reduce their overhead by billions. Last but not least, companies won’t have to worry about paying a minimum wage of up to $15 an hour and providing benefits

Little Caeser’s want to create their own BotPizza chain Little Caesars has been awarded a patent for an AI-based robotic system that will help assemble Pizzas at a significantly faster pace. The patent includes two robots, one stationary arm and another fully-fledged robot chef to handle the dough and take care of oven duties.

According to the company’s explanation in the patent, the robot would free Little Caesars from the tedium of repetitive tasks and allow them to “perform other value-added tasks.” Presumably, that’s the same thinking that gave us Flippy, the burger-flipping robot.

It doesn’t appear to actually cook the pizzas or slice them, and the only listed topping is pepperoni — though it probably wouldn’t be hard to adapt it to other toppings. I’m sure there are only so many ways one can “properly distribute” pineapple or olives. Still, there are other robots already doing the things this particular one can’t — Zume Pizza in Silicon Valley, for example, can shape the dough and bake the pizzas at a rate of 372 an hour.

If Little Caesars were to ever combine their robot with Pizza Hut’s self-driving pizza delivery truck, the only human force we’ll ever need will be a single human to load the pizzas into the car.